After 30 Years in the Army, Cocktail Hour Counts

Maj. General Kenneth Dahl and Col. Celia FlorCruz, West Point sweethearts, now married 30 years.

March 15, 2013

Making It Last

By MICHAEL WINERIP

Booming’s “Making It Last” column profiles baby boomer couples who have been together 25 years or more. Send us your story and photos through our submission form.

Lt. Col. Celia FlorCruz and Maj. General Kenneth Dahl have been married 30 years. General Dahl, a deputy commanding general for United States forces in Afghanistan, is stationed in Kabul, helping to oversee the withdrawal of troops from the country. Colonel FlorCruz flies Army helicopters and is currently commanding a medical unit of 700 at Fort Drum in upstate New York. He has done four tours overseas, she has done two. They began dating in 1980 during their junior year at West Point and have two college-age daughters. Their interviews have been edited and condensed.

How did you start dating?

Celia: My father was a West Point grad, a retired colonel. From the beginning my goal was to have a career in the Army and retire with 30 years in 2012 as a colonel. I hadn’t planned on marriage or kids. So when I met Kenny, I was not looking for a relationship.

Ken: My junior year we had a class near each other. I’d be trying to find a reason to pass her. I had a friend from the lacrosse team with a first-floor room and I’d run to his room, look out the window and when she was about to pass, I’d run out and we’d have a chance encounter. I finally got up the courage to ask her to the movies.

Celia: “It Came From Outer Space,” at Thayer Hall, one of those 3-D movies with the glasses — awful.

During the movie he handed me a Starlight peppermint; they didn’t have refreshments. He had it in his pocket, which was a nice surprise. There aren’t really pockets in dress grays — just a tiny one at the hem. You have to unzip the bottom of the jacket, which you’re not supposed to do in public.

Ken: I’m thinking, “What can I do to make this special?” To let her know it was not just a movie. The peppermint turned out to be a big deal. The rest of the time we were at West Point, I was leaving peppermints on her desk.

First kiss?

Celia: We walked back to the barracks, we sort of were not supposed to touch. He put two fingers to his lips and then put them on mine.

How was that?

Celia: A little disappointing. I’d been looking at his lips for several weeks, thinking how awesome they’d be. There was no public display of affection allowed.

Was there any public around?

Celia: Kenny usually does the right thing whether someone’s watching or not.

Ken: I didn’t have the courage to kiss her. She has a strong personality and my sense was you’ll only get one shot. There were 4,000 guys and 60 girls in our class. Most were taller and better cadets than I was. What chance do I have? I wasn’t going to go too fast and screw things up.

At some point there was a real kiss?

Celia: A week later in the library. In the stacks. If you stayed still long enough, the lights would go out.

And?

Celia: Pretty awesome, I definitely needed more of that.

Ken: I was falling pretty hard and she was being very cautious. She’d get spooked, push back hard, try to break contact. I’d panic. I can still feel it, the panic, oh my God, I’m going to lose her.

I’d track her down at the dining hall, ramp up the peppermint patties.

Celia: I’d try to break up with him. This was not my plan. I never went with anyone for more than three months. ‘Why are you still here?’ It was hard to get rid of Kenny. He treated everybody with a lot of respect. Most guys at West Point are very arch about women.

Ken: She’d say, “What if we have kids?” I said, “I’ll get out of the Army and take care of them, I’m O.K. with that.”

The proposal?

Ken: I was confident she’d say yes but wanted to ask her father’s permission. After lacrosse practice Friday night, my brother and I drove to her folks’ house in Virginia.

Celia didn’t know. We got there after midnight.

We were at the kitchen table. I said to her father, “I want to ask your permission to marry your daughter and I’m hoping for your blessing.” He gave me two pieces of advice: Don’t let her get between you and your family and start saving money. But he never actually said yes; I was waiting for that. After a while I assumed that was a yes. Then we got in the car and drove back to West Point in time for practice Saturday morning.

You’re both Catholic and eventually had a church wedding. But right after graduation, you married in a civil ceremony so you could go off to your first post in Germany together.

Ken: When we came back to the house, her father said, that’s very nice, but you sleep down the hall, you’re not married until the church and sacrament.

Separate bedrooms on your wedding night?

Ken: Thanks to my military training, I knew how to get from one end of the hall to the other without the floor creaking.

Celia was the first to deploy, as a Medevac pilot in Desert Storm. Ken, you were getting your master’s at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and caring for Allie, who was 17 months old at the time.

The couple's church wedding; they were first wed in a civil ceremony so they could be posted to Germany together.

Celia: I think we spent two years together in our first seven years of marriage.

Ken: Celia was terrified she wouldn’t come home. She was terrified Allie wouldn’t remember her. I blew up a photo of her and taped it by Allie’s bed and we’d kiss Mommy good night. I took all these photos of Celia and put them in plastic frames and left them around the house and Allie would play with them.

When her unit returned to Fort Bragg, they marched off the plane in formation. There was a lot of confusion, I was holding Allie and looking around for Celia, and Allie started yelling, “Mommy!” She saw Celia first. She recognized her.

It worked.

Ken: When I count my successes in life, that’s at the top.

After your second child, Celia left Army active duty for 17 years. That wasn’t the plan.

Ken: It was a big surprise. I said I’m the one who’s supposed to get out. I felt really bad.

Celia: I didn’t want someone else raising the girls. I loved the Army, but my maternal instincts kicked in. I loved my husband and children more.

Suddenly you were an Army wife.

Celia: It was hard. You look around and see a lot of troubled marriages. Soldiers go off to war, everybody changes, they come back, they don’t fit together in the same ways. We’ve seen a number of our classmates climb to very high ranks and their marriages fail.

How about my buddy, he goes down range, his heart broken. As the plane is taking off, he gets a text from his wife, I’m leaving you.

Ken: There was a period it was really bad. Both my brothers’ marriages fell apart. We sat down with the girls, we told them this wasn’t going to happen to us, you don’t have to worry.

Celia, you’re also a counselor. What do you say to the wives?

Celia: I teach divorce prevention. One of the things I say is don’t talk about sex all the time with your girlfriends. You start talking about sex, you start looking for sex, consciously and unconsciously.

Ken: When Celia was gone, I’d open her closet just to smell her. We really enjoy having a cocktail at night together. While she’s deployed I don’t drink, I couldn’t enjoy it.

Two years without a drink?

Ken: Actually, the second deployment I gave that up, that wasn’t going to last.

Does Skyping and talking regularly by phone help?

Celia: No. We talk maybe once every 10 days. If you’re trying to speak every day, you get called away on a detail, the spouse at home is afraid something bad has happened and has wasted a whole day waiting for a call that never came.

Ken: One thing about Celia, she’s a letter writer. I have 270 letters so far from her. Last deployment, 380.

It can’t be easy adjusting as a couple when your spouse returns from war.

Ken: Celia’s a Medevac. She sees all kinds of carnage. I remember we went to see “Saving Private Ryan.” She walked out in the opening scene. I’m not really up for it, she says.

Celia: Back from war, I really wasn’t feeling romantic or like being touched. I’d adapted myself to another environment. There was no reason to expect to live. It was natural for Kenny to want a softer wife.

Getting romantic again didn’t take long. But getting over post-traumatic stress disorder was about 10 years. At first, I had hallucinations. I thought a helicopter was chasing me.

One of my soldiers took a pistol and blew off the back of her head. Another was admitted to a rubber room in the Midwest calling for me.

How did you get over it?

Celia: What finally did it, was putting it all on paper. I remember writing, ‘It’s not my fault. They wouldn’t take her out of the cockpit when I told them she wasn’t doing well.’

At first I expected Kenny to be my knight in shining armor to help with the whole P.T.S.D. thing. I was expecting him to rescue me. I don’t want to hurt his feelings, but I had to realize he didn’t have the answer. Eventually, it made our marriage stronger.

Ken: Our Catholicism has been important. I go to Mass every week here, even if the priest isn’t particularly good.

At night, I look at the moon in Kabul and think, Celia’s looking at the same moon.

Greatest joy?

Celia: Married so long, so well.

Ken: My first wish is that our two daughters are as happily married as Celia and I are.